Management Best Practices

Top 5 Social Networking Tips You Need to Know

Mon, 8 Feb 2010 19:54:06 -0600

Top 5 Social Networking Tips You Need to Know
January 26, 2010 - By Vangie Beal

When it comes to building online communities and interacting with customers, social networks can be a big help — especially for small businesses that can’t afford to launch their own private online communities,

Communispace Corporation, an online-communities marketing technology and services firm, believes that online communities can help companies connect with their customers, capture marketing insights, and also build brand advocates within the community.

Before jumping on a social network to interact with your customers and clients, consider the following best-practice advice from Debi Kleiman, vice president of product marketing at Communispace. These tips will help you build a better, smarter relationship in the socialsphere.

Tip #1: Go where your customers congregate
Some businesses simply start a profile on a popular social networking site and hope customers will find them there. Kleiman says that a smarter way to get started is to find out where your customers already are.
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“It is smarter to join people where they already congregate. These customers have already formed the social glue that holds online relationships together, so you don’t have to create a new space,” says Kleiman.
For example, if you are a travel agent, start communicating and participating in the social spaces where those interested in travel already gather online. Start out by being a good resource — offer advice and talk without a sales pitch.
Remember, there is no single best social networking tool that will fit all businesses and marketers. The goal, Kleiman says, is to start participating where your customers already gather and then build towards the larger goal of being the resource and forging relationships.

Tip #2: Stop broadcasting and start listening
One mistake businesses that venture into the world of online social networking often make, according to Kleiman, is that they forget to “listen” and concentrate on the “broadcast” aspect, which is sending out marketing messages.
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Marketers and business owners usually just scratch the surface of communicating with clients. A business can learn a lot from continuously talking with people who join them on social networking sites.
Kleiman believes that building online communities, using tools like chat rooms and discussion forums, requires the same skills as conversing over social networks. Those who are successful demonstrate their ability to listen to their communities.
“If you only broadcast you will fail. You have to build a relationship with conversation and listen to your community and respond to them,” says Kleiman.

Tip #3: Ramp up your response time
Kleiman says that a successful community depends on you being in there every day to show people that you are listening.
While listening to what the people in your social networking space say is important, it is equally important to respond. Your response tells people that you listen and hear what they are saying.
To demonstrate that you are listening, you need to respond directly to questions — or ask your own questions to make the community members feel valuable.

Tip #4: Show the human face behind your business
Kleiman recommends that small business owners use a “human” online voice instead of a business presence. People in social networks and online communities create relationships with people, not businesses.
Friends don’t “pitch” friends on social networks — they converse. To get relationships started, you have to be a resource, not a sales pitch. Again, this goes back to being a good social listener and doing more in the community than just broadcasting business messages.
Kleiman recommends that you use a picture, and not always a brand logo, to remind people that you are human. You should also stay on point in your conversations but be friendly in your conversations by dropping the corporate tone.
Everyone will make mistakes, but if you own up to the people in your social space when you do, they will be forgiving. You don’t have to be the expert right away. That’s a part of being a human in the community.

Tip #5: Give them a reason to show up
Kleiman says that successful communities need “social glue” to hold them together. There has to be value for people in the interaction, and there needs to be a reason for people to be a part of the social network.
“A dentist, for example doesn’t use social networking to talk about customer appointments and his business. Instead, he might talk about dental hygiene for kids and offer education topics for discussion,” says Kleiman.
Use your social space to converse, to solve a problem or to educate people, versus using it to talk about your product. Make sure you provide ample opportunity for people to network and communicate with each other to grow your community.

Additional Resources
For more information about communicating with online communities, visit the Communispace Web site. Communispace marketing and communication experts, like Debi Kleiman, contribute helpful advice and best practice tips on the company’s Verbatim blog.

Blogging Gives Way to Newer Social Sites

Mon, 8 Feb 2010 19:26:37 -0600

Has blogging run its course?
Once regarded as a cutting-edge form of communication, blogging has fallen out of favor with younger Internet users, according to a new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
Three years ago, 28 percent of teens and young adults identified themselves as bloggers. But in a study conducted last year and set for release Wednesday, just 14 percent of teens (defined as ages 12 to 17) and 15 percent of young adults (ages 18 to 29) say they're blogging.
Why the sudden drop-off? According to Amanda Lenhart, one of the report's authors and a senior researcher at the Pew Internet Project, many younger Internet users feel like blogging is no longer relevant as new forms of social media have taken hold.
"Blogging appears to have lost its luster for many young users," Lenhart said in a statement. "The fad stage is over for teens and young adults and the move to Facebook—which lacks a specific tool for blogging within the network—may have contributed to the decline of blogging among young adults and teens."
Among older adults, however, it's a different story. Pew found that 11 percent of adults 30 or older identified themselves as bloggers, up from 7 percent in 2006.
But for the younger generation, often referred to as digital natives, social networking sites seem to have supplanted longer-format standalone blogs as the favorite means of engaging with the social Web. Seventy-three percent of teen Internet users said they have a profile on a social networking site, well up from 55 percent in 2006.
Lenhart pointed to the popularity of status updates and micro-blogs as prime contributors to the waning interest in "macro-blogs," though Twitter has surprisingly little to do with it.
Pew found that just 8 percent of teens Internet users said they use the much-hyped micro-blogging service, roughly the same proportion that said they have characters on virtual worlds.
Twitter and other status-update service were most popular among young adults, with a third of respondents between 18 and 29 telling the Pew researchers that they use Twitter or a similar status-update mechanism, like the feature Facebook offers.
The study also highlighted the fragmentation of the social networking landscape, finding that 57 percent of adults who engage with social networks have profiles on more than one site.
Among adults with social networking profiles, 73 percent have an account with Facebook, followed by 48 percent who said they have a MySpace page, and 14 percent who are members of LinkedIn. The study found that younger adults were much more likely to have MySpace profiles than older users, while the popularity of Facebook was roughly even among younger and older adults.

How to Twitter for E-commerce Success

Mon, 8 Feb 2010 18:38:39 -0600

How to Twitter for E-commerce Success By Vangie Beal February 3, 2010 
Twitter can be an important marketing and customer service tool for businesses, but it’s easy to make mistakes. A business owner may hear about Twitter and decide to jump on the bandwagon and wrongly expect this micro-blogging service to be a substitute for a marketing or customer-service plan.
The best way to get the most out of Twitter is to incorporate the tool into your current strategies. Remember, Twitter can help your business — but it is not a complete solution on its own.
We take a look at one company’s Twitter success and discuss the strategies it uses.
The Dell Outlet
The Dell Outlet is Dell’s online Web shop for purchasing refurbished Dell computers and electronics. By bringing its outlet site to Twitter, Dell claims to have generated $6.5 million from its Twitter activities last year. In addition to the value of the direct sales via tweeting, the company has also realized revenue from people who start by following a Twitter link and continue on to other pages on the Dell Web site to buy a new computer.
Those numbers might sound impressive at first glance, but the actual dollar value is only a fraction of Dell's multi-billion-dollar annual sales. Still, it does show that online businesses — especially e-commerce Web shops — can realize a profit and sales through creative and effective business twittering.
How Dell Uses Twitter: Dell uses Twitter to send messages about the latest refurbished systems available in the Dell Outlet. It also tweets coupons and messages about clearance events. In February of last year, Dell started offering exclusive deals to Twitter followers in the United States. Dell's messages are tweeted out to more than 1.5m followers on the Twitter service.
What is Dell Doing Right?
The first thing to note, despite the Twitter media hype around Dell, is that its success did not come from using Twitter to create a new business model or sales channel. The Dell Outlet was already successful before it began tweeting. The company uses a special Web shop on its Web site and e-mail marketing to promote this small part of the business, and it integrated Twitter into its strategy for higher conversions.
Plus, the Dell Outlet Twitter account consistently targets the same audience and focuses only on the Dell Outlet in their tweets. There is no mention of newly launched Dell PCs or laptops or other electronics and services that you’ll discover in other places on their Web site. The tweets are targeted and provide information that niche bargain hunters are looking for. Dell provides links on its Twitter profile for people interested in following other Dell businesses.
The Dell Outlet Twitter account is also personalized. They have removed the business tone from their Twitter presence by displaying a real name, contact information and photo of the spokesperson responsible for the Dell Outlet on Twitter.
Dell displays the business identity, but it places more emphasis on the person tweeting behind the corporate logo. When you bring your business in to social media it is important to present an individual face. People will always respond better to a person than a business a social media setting.
Lastly, Dell uses this Twitter account as a communication tool to respond to its Outlet customers. Followers who have purchased a deal from the Dell Outlet or those with questions about Dell coupons and deals can ask their questions via Twitter and the Dell Outlet follows up with the customer in a Twitter reply.
What’s it Mean for Your Small E-commerce Business?
Here’s the takeaway: you can study the marketing strategies that Dell uses on Twitter — with great success — and adapt them to suit your own e-commerce business.
Based on the success of corporations such as Dell, Zappos and others, you can incorporate the following strategies into your own Twitter presence.
• Don’t create a new aspect of your business just to tweet about it. Tweet about your core business — about what you do best.
• Select one person from within your business to represent the company on Twitter. Make sure your followers know that person’s face and name.
• Keep your tweets relevant and focused. Rather than using one Twitter account for all your business tweets, create separate accounts and limit each account to one specific topic or theme.
• Make sure your tweet has value for the customer. They don’t care so much about your broken office air conditioner as they do a hot new product or super deal. Good tweets are those that invite a response or retweet from your follower.
• Be responsive. If you customers use Twitter as the medium to initiate customer service or technical support conversations, follow up with them in Twitter.